A Sleepytime Trio of Interesting Things That Caught My Attention

Often I wish one of two things*: 1) that I was just a couple years older or, 2) that I had any fucking clue at all in high school. I like to imagine that such fortunate alterations of circumstance would have greatly embiggened any chance I had of seeing Sleepytime Trio live. Alas, ’twas never to be. Apparently they played a one-off in 2007, though I didn’t know about that, either, which I feel is for the best, since at the time I was very busy being a poor person. Some people did know about it, however, and this video proves it.

Sleepytime Trio were mighty and they win a bonus for having one of those marvelously rudimentary “This was a semi-obscure band at best” Wikipedia pages. (Presumably done by a semi-lazy fan. I would be a fully-lazy fan given that I’ve never edited a wiki anything.) Two mind-blowing sentences really stand out here:

• “The band enjoyed a modest following, playing in mostly basement venues with fair at best sound systems.”

This sentence caught me off guard. At first glance it screams “For what mediocrity enveloped this faire crewe?!” On further examination it reveals a lot about the band’s existence and the world it inhabited, but does so in a manner that inverts what otherwise appears to be a backhanded compliment. Would that make it a congratulatory derogation? An acclamatory belittling? A laudational diss? Anyway, weird. I kinda like it. Before I change my mind let’s check out the other sentence.

• “Their songs consist mostly of heavy screaming and guitar riffs.”

Now this sentence is an abomination. It easily ranks among the least successful descriptions ever attempted by man. Deepak Chopra has uttered more meaningful phrases than that. Approximately 74,396 songs fit those two parameters, and that’s just the ones sung in English. It’s actually difficult to compose a sentence completely lacking in useful information without it devolving into gibberish, which makes this adorable little specimen a real accomplishment.

*This is not true, but it makes for a decent opening line and also does an okay job feinting that I ever got a clue even after high school.